Incompetent And Seen To Be Incompetent

Tout Seul

Tout Seul

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I was in the public gallery at Snaresbrook Court today and saw some of the inner workings of our legal system. The particular court I attended was handling cases in which the time in court was expected to be be relatively short. A sort of round-up of sentencing ,bail or custody applications,setting of trial dates and the like.

The judge,who seemed to be in a thank goodness it's Friday mood, is, I am told , one of the sterner types and certainly acted in a manner deliberately detemined so as to make those in front of him uncomfortable. However I were I in his place today my most frequent utterance would have been " Off with his head!" The extraordinary degree of incompetence of the court officials, and those involved in the teams acting on behalf of both defence and prosecution of the various defendants was so appalling
that as merely an observer,with no axe to grind, I became increasingly and extremely frustrated in my inability to tell this stream of ,in many cases well-paid, fools,wgat abunch of f**cking idiots they were. What makes it worse is that many of the cases involved serious charges,such as rape, murder/attempted murder, etc.

From a litany of stupidity I provide the following examples, but there were just so many more that as I type my blood begins to boil again.

Early doors,to coin a phrase, a massive ,smiling and confident looking but hugely intimidating fellow was the defendandant in a case involving a series of muggings and sometimes rape of old women. His trial date was due to be set however a report on the man, who had a number of past convictions for similar crimes and also been acquitted of the murder of one of his victims in the past, had not been completed .Someone had forgotten to tell someone ,in addition certain important documents relating to some of the earlier events in the series had been mislaid. The cock-ups were starting to come to light.

Then another case for trial date. Oops,the prosecution had not sent to the defence various disclosure papers that they had undertaken to do so at last hearing in early January-oh yes they had,on the very day of that hearing- oh no they didn't. Nobody from either side had thought to check either in January or just prior to today's hearing.So another date organised in April to set a trial date- great for the defendant on remand in custody!

In a third case prosecution counsel began by stating "I'm not sure what I'm doing here on this one" :rolleyes: and the defence counsel " I'm not certain I understand my instructions on this" :rolleyes: :rolleyes:. A good start and it got worse. The defendant , who not surprisingly was not present, had appeared before the court on Tuesday as a result of being accused of breaking a condition of bail by intimidating a witness. A further hearing had been set for today as the defendant was to face a lower court on Thursday for the said intimidation.Unfortunately nobody in the court could confirm whether or not the defendant had been remanded in custody at the earlier hearing and whether he had attended the lower court. The judge thought the defendant would have been in custody and the police officer dealing with the case was unable to confirm anything. Sheer farce!

In the case I was interested in the defendants received 71/2 years after pleading guilty to a robbery in which a guard received minor bruises and scratches to his arms
as they bound him with duct tape.Whilst I do not necessarily think the sentence to be too long it doesn't sit easily with me that it was 50% longer than the smiling mugger and raper of old women had got on one of his previous convictions. My priorities would be different.
 
It happens Tout Seul when you try and run a criminal justice system on the cheap . Criminal legal aid has been frozen for seven years I understand. Solicitors then end up employing unqualified paralegals . The CPS is institutionally incompetent . The court listing system , which works on the basis that a judge must never be twiddling their thumbs ,means that cases are overbooked and double booked and as a result counsel change at the last minute and often have to find out what a case is about on the morning.

Then we have a government creating several hundred new criminal offences . The number of prosecutions are rising and the legal aid budget is now capped so that if criminal legal aid overspends it comes off the civil legal aid budget - thus the recent proposals of the Legal Services Commission which are bascially designed to stop poor people defending themselves in civil cases and going to court .

I stopped doing crime as soon as I could . The system means that you sail by the seat of your pants all the time unless you are senior enough only to be doing big trials .

It is a cretinous way to run a criminal justice system .
 
I have a friend who is both a solicitor and a barrister. I once met him in a wine bar when he introduced me to a friend that he was with. I asked the guy I didn't know whether he was a lawyer too and my friend replied for him: "No, he's in the CPS!"
 
In the UK you cannot be both a solicitor and a barrister at the same time . You can of course like me be a former solicitor and now a barrister , or vice versa .

That joke by the way is as old as Merlin's
 
I meant that he had qualified as both. He was working as the clerk to the justices in East Surrey. I didn't even know that it was a pre-set joke - that's what was actually said.
 
A costly circus that could be replaced by lie detectors which would not only yield more accurate verdicts but bring about a huge increase in guilty verdicts. I'm not saying it's a case of strapping the accused to the chair and asking them if they're guilty, all witnesses would undergo a test and lie detection experts would pool their opinions of the results.

They could also be used in the case of asylum seekers. Rather than having them inhumanely dubbed up for months on end decisions could be made quickly and with more accuracy than the current method. It might also prevent a lot of economic migrants from wasting their time coming in the first place.

I await the barrage of "but what if"'s from people who forget the multitude of "but what if"'s the current circus has.
 
I was going to bring this subject up a few days ago HT re polygraph tests.

It costs around £750 per case plus £100 travel if anyone is interested !

It is thought to be 90% plus accurate and there are also books out on how you can beat a test..

I would also use graphology when employing people which has in some ways links to a polygraph test.
 
I knew HT's posting would be about this . They are being abandoned in the US as evidence shows them to be unreliable . Fortunately even our Govt is not so stupid as to introduce them .

The other point that Tom misses is the well known fact that people accused of crimes lie for many other reasons than guilt of the crime itself e.g a man accused of a crime who had a cast iron alibi that he could not bring himself to use as he was in bed with his mistress at the time so he invents a false alibi
 
Our judicial system has also proved unreliable with people locked up for years when innocent.

You don't have to have committed any other crime to feel the need to lie re having a mistress :P

I am sure that I read where polygraph testing was being considered for something in the UK, may have been re immigrant applications ??
 
Originally posted by Ardross@Mar 5 2005, 12:38 PM
The other point that Tom misses is the well known fact that people accused of crimes lie for many other reasons than guilt of the crime itself e.g a man accused of a crime who had a cast iron alibi that he could not bring himself to use as he was in bed with his mistress at the time so he invents a false alibi
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The polygraph (assuming it worked) would then show that he wasn't lying about being innocent of the crime but that he was giving a false alibi which would probably save police time chasing up his false alibi.

221, Me & Ardross have had many arguments about this to the extent that I once sneaked up on him, strapped him to a lie detector and asked him if he thought lie detectors would be more accurate than the current system. "No" he said. The machine went "BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP". :lol: He has a vested interest you see.
 
I gathered that HT but it is an interesting subject.
I see where the CIA always use a polygraph when vetting prospective personel.
 
As I don't deal with criminal cases how do I have a vested interest ?

Furthermore what your test really fails to deal with is the honest but mistaken witness .
 
90% plus was a generalisation Gareth and the accepted rate appears to be 96%.

To compare it with the failure rate of aircraft is hardly fair is it no matter what the % is ? Look at the failure rate of marriages and you could argue that only an idiot would bother :D
 
Originally posted by Ardross@Mar 5 2005, 04:57 PM
As I don't deal with criminal cases how do I have a vested interest ?

Furthermore what your test really fails to deal with is the honest but mistaken witness .
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It's not just criminal cases that would be covered Ardross.

How does the current system deal with the honest but mistaken witness? Hopefully their evidence would be contradicted by another witness but that would happen with the detector system as well.

Would you fly with an airline who's planes have a 10% failure rate?
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Gareth, the test would be applied to the accused, witnesses, police etc. so we're not talking about the verdict being based on a single test. Nevertheless, a 90% success rate would be a lot better than we have just now.

Put it this way. You've been accused by your neighbours of sexually asaulting their 6 year old. You're entirely innocent. Would you rather they were strapped to lie detectors, shown to be the liars they are and charged with wasting police time (of course they would never try to pull this off in the first place under the detector system) OR have your fate decided by 12 people who were too stupid to get out of jury duty AND be tarred for life regardless of the verdict.
 
HT your hopefulness says it all - the current system is not perfect but it is the best we have got.
 
To compare it with the failure rate of aircraft is hardly fair is it no matter what the % is ?
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I'm just trying to point out that 90% or 96% might seem impressive, but when we're talking about something as critical to people's lives as the criminal justice system, it's not good enough. If we're putting something of such importance into the hands of technology, I'd want a system that provides a negligible margin of error.

Tom, the problem with lie detectors is that they only pick up on people who know that they're lying. I find it hard to believe that somebody would put their child through a case such as you described unless they believed that what they thought had happened had happened, whether or not it actually *did* happen. This would make their success under a lie detector meaningless.
 
Originally posted by Ardross@Mar 5 2005, 05:56 PM
HT your hopefulness says it all - the current system is not perfect but it is the best we have got.
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You've lost me Ardross. I'm drowning in the logic of your argument.

I find it hard to believe that somebody would put their child through a case such as you described unless they believed that what they thought had happened had happened, whether or not it actually *did* happen
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Gareth, exactly. A jury would think the same way.
 
Gareth, so you would only accept a system that was 100% which is 99.999%impossible ;)

The present system has resulted in some really bad injustices where people have spent many years banged up,
DNA has had a lot of influence in exposing many injustices and I dare say future technology will help further but 100% ?

I think the polygraph has a part to play in as much that it could be a factor without being the sole reliance of proving guilt.
 
The point HT is that you were trusting to hope that someone " telling the truth " could contradict the honest but mistaken witness rather than a case being decided on evidence.
 
I said a negligible margin of error. A system that gets it wrong 4 or 10 times out of 100 isn't good enough. Extrapolate that error rate over a year and I suspect the number of wrong calls would be quite scary. I'll take my chances with a jury of my peers, thanks.
 
With the present system, you can have a person charged with a serious offence and has a history of the same offence yet, his history is unknown to a jury whilst considering a verdict.
If I am wrong with this then I stand corrected.

I know that the jury would be considering only the latest offence but shouldn't his previous record be taken into consideration especially with serial offenders ?

There have been people who have been let off because of a lack of evidence and the element of doubt factor but, after getting off have gone on to commit the same crime again with serious consequencies.

A myriad of things to consider
 
Originally posted by Ardross@Mar 5 2005, 06:54 PM
The point HT is that you were trusting to hope that someone " telling the truth " could contradict the honest but mistaken witness rather than a case being decided on evidence.
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Ardross, I still don't get what your point is. Under the current system the erronous witness would be found out because .....?
 
Cross-examination is a very powerful tool at exposing mistaken witnesses . If your experience of advocacy is limited to watching the TV you might think it is all I put it to you bollocks . It isn't - the art is teasing away at inconsitency and belief in your own story with a mistaken witness - something some stupid machine going BEEP can't do

I recommend Francis Wellman's legendary book The Art of Cross examination
 
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